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- 4780
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:09.927Z
- extracted_by
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- start_line
- 4695
- text
- The mission was crowned with success.
Said King Hello to the ministers, in confidence:—“The very thing, Dons,
the very thing I have wanted. My people are increasing too fast. They
keep up the succession too well. Tell your illustrious master it’s a
bargain. The games! the games! by all means.”
So, throughout the island, by proclamation, they were forthwith
established; succeeding to a charm.
And the lord seigniors, Hello and Piko, finding their interests the
same, came together like bride and bridegroom; lived in the same
palace; dined off the same cloth; cut from the same bread-fruit; drank
from the same calabash; wore each other’s crowns; and often locking
arms with a charming frankness, paced up and down in their dominions,
discussing the prospect of the next harvest of heads.
In his old-fashioned way, having related all this, with many other
particulars, Mohi was interrupted by Babbalanja, who inquired how the
people of Diranda relished the games, and how they fancied being coolly
thinned out in that manner.
To which in substance the chronicler replied, that of the true object
of the games, they had not the faintest conception; but hammered away
at each other, and fought and died together, like jolly good fellows.
“Right again, immortal old Bardianna!” cried Babbalanja.
“And what has the sage to the point this time?” asked Media.
“Why, my lord, in his chapter on “Cracked Crowns,” Bardianna, after
many profound ponderings, thus concludes: In this cracked sphere we
live in, then, cracked skulls would seem the inevitable allotments of
many. Nor will the splintering thereof cease, till this pugnacious
animal we treat of be deprived of his natural maces: videlicet, his
arms. And right well doth man love to bruise and batter all occiputs in
his vicinity.”
“Seems to me, our old friend must have been on his stilts that time,”
interrupted Mohi.
“No, Braid-Beard. But by way of apologizing for the unusual rigidity of
his style in that chapter, he says in a note, that it was written upon
a straight-backed settle, when he was ill of a lumbago, and a crick in
the neck.”
“That incorrigible Azzageddi again,” said Media, “Proceed with your
quotation, Babbalanja.”
“Where was I, Braid-Beard?”
“Battering occiputs at the last accounts,” said Mohi.
“Ah, yes. And right well doth man love to bruise and batter all
occiputs in his vicinity; he but follows his instincts; he is but one
member of a fighting world. Spiders, vixens, and tigers all war with a
relish; and on every side is heard the howls of hyenas, the throttlings
of mastiffs, the din of belligerant beetles, the buzzing warfare of the
insect battalions: and the shrill cries of lady Tartars rending their
lords. And all this existeth of necessity. To war it is, and other
depopulators, that we are beholden for elbow-room in Mardi and for all
our parks an gardens, wherein we are wont to expatiate. Come on, then,
plague, war, famine and viragos! Come on, I say, for who shall stay ye?
Come on, and healthfulize the census! And more especially, oh War! do
thou march forth with thy bludgeon! Cracked are, our crowns by nature,
and henceforth forever, cracked shall they be by hard raps.”
“And hopelessly cracked the skull, that hatched such a tirade of
nonsense,” said Mohi.
“And think you not, old Bardianna knew that?” asked Babbalanja. “He
wrote an excellent chapter on that very subject.”
“What, on the cracks in his own pate?”
“Precisely. And expressly asserts, that to those identical cracks, was
he indebted for what little light he had in his brain.”
“I yield, Babbalanja; your old Ponderer is older than I.”
“Ay, ay, Braid-Beard; his crest was a tortoise; and this was the
motto:—‘I bite, but am not to be bitten.’”
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